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Wolves howl because they care

TANYA NOLAN: European researchers have revealed that the howl of the wolf is far more complex than previously thought.

The team from Austria's Wolf Science Centre says there are many different types of howls, depending on the situation.

And it's raised fresh questions about how other animal species communicate.

Emily Bourke reports.

(Sound of a wolf howling)

EMILY BOURKE: Wolves howl to rally the pack before they go out hunting and they do the same at the end of a successful hunt.

They howl to mark out territory and they also howl when one of the pack leaves the group.

But the amount of howling depends on who leaves.

Dr Friederike Range is from Austria's Wolf Science Centre, which has just published some new research on wolf howling behaviour.

FRIEDERIKE RANGE: And the animals howl more for higher ranking animals and especially they howl more for preferred partners, so for animals that they hang out with a lot. So we did some observations of social behaviour and you always find that some animals stick more together with certain other animals, so they play more, they approach more, they interact more in a friendly way, so they like certain animals more than others and so for those they howl more.

EMILY BOURKE: And when they do separate are they fretting, are they distressed or are they pining?

FRIEDERIKE RANGE: So we had two situations, the control situation and the test situation. The control situation animals are just removed to a testing enclosure, a testing house, in the vicinity of the enclosure so the rest of the pack knew exactly where the member was and then the testing situation, the animals were actually taken out for a walk into the forest so the rest of the pack didn't really know where they would go and we found a different in the stress level between these two situations.

So in general it is stressful for the animal if a pack member actually leaves the pack to go further away.

FRIEDERIKE RANGE: What it showed that it's not just emotional response, I mean they are stressed, yeah, but the relationship still plays a role. So it's not just an emotional response, the control doesn't explain the howling problem, so it's more, they have some flexible control about how much they howl and that's independent of the physiological or emotional state.

EMILY BOURKE: And she says the findings raise questions about other animal calls.

FRIEDERIKE RANGE: What it tells us about animal communication is that it's, that the animals might be more flexible than we thought in producing calls, because there's been this debate that it's really vocal production is based on the emotional state of the animals or other people claim that it's more on the cognitive abilities of the animals, so they have more cognitive control over these vocalisations, but it seems to be that they do have some control.